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Robert Samuelson

Obama’s leadership failure

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office puts it this way:

“With the population aging and health care costs per person likely to keep growing faster than the economy [gross domestic product], the United States cannot sustain the federal spending programs that are now in place with the federal taxes (as a share of GDP) that it has been accustomed to paying.”

Until Obama conspicuously and consistently acknowledges these realities in straightforward and unmistakable language — something he hasn’t done and shows no signs of doing — he cannot be said to be dealing honestly with the budget or with the American people. The main reason that we keep having these destructive and inconclusive budget confrontations is not simply that many Republicans have been intransigent on taxes. The larger cause is that Obama refuses to concede that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are driving future spending and deficits. So when Republicans make concessions on taxes (as they have), they get little in return. Naturally, this poisons the negotiating climate.

Of course, Obama would offend many Democrats if he entertained benefit cuts in Social Security and Medicare: higher eligibility ages, higher premiums for affluent elderly, structural changes in the health-care system to reduce costs.

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To assume Obama has failed at ‘leadership’ you would have to assume he was a leader, or at least attempted to be.

At one point, about a year or so ago, I had hoped the Republicans would give Obama the tax hikes he wanted, if for no other reason, but to take the issue off of the table for the election, but I realized that there will never be enough for him, and he has already confirmed that he will continue to push for more and higher taxes next year before a deal is complete on the current ‘cliff’.

This truly is a War on Prosperity. Obama and most Far-Left ideologues believe the Wealth and Prosperity of America is one of the biggest source of the problems throughout the World.

While his supporters cheer his attacks on the Wealthy, they don’t even realize the United States as a whole is the “1%” to the rest of the World. He won’t be happy until he has dragged us down to a near Third-World status.

Taxing the rich is on its way. Since Obama’s spending needs can’t be paid with what are, in comparison to sending, paltry revenues from increased taxes, eventually Obama will propose a tax on wealth. He will say that it’s only fair that those who have so much should pay a little more to sustain the country that has given them everything.

His goal is and always has been to collapse the dollar and introduce Socialism/Marxism/Communism. Everything he has done and supported supports my assertion. Government has become nothing more than Kabuki theatre and our freedoms and liberties are routinely stripped away in front of our eyes. Once they accomplish disarming the population it will be officially over and the ugly truths will become frighteningly evident.

He won’t be happy until he has dragged us down to a near Third-World status.

All in the name of “Fairness”. Enjoy.

cntrlfrk on January 1, 2013 at 8:23 AM

Wrong!
The goal is to make sure we are the lowest least effect country on the planet. Subservient to all. The US must be completely and utterly destroyed before BO and his leftest ilk can take their rightful places among the elite of Europe.

His goal is and always has been to collapse the dollar and introduce Socialism/Marxism/Communism. Everything he has done and supported supports my assertion. Government has become nothing more than Kabuki theatre and our freedoms and liberties are routinely stripped away in front of our eyes. Once they accomplish disarming the population it will be officially over and the ugly truths will become frighteningly evident.

trs on January 1, 2013 at 10:13 AM

And I hope to live long enough to see the horror on the faces of the useful idiots when they get their utopia and realize the truth of what they helped to accomplish.